Watched: Super 8
This was captivating, and weird, and the film benefited hugely from casting relative unknowns (Kyle Chandler, who plays the protagonist’s father, sticks out only by virtue of being recognisable). It’s also a film fronted by child actors who are likeable and emotionally honest - the lead, Joel Courtney, is phenomenal, but really every character plays with exactly the sort of humanity you need in a film like this.
Visually, it feels like a mash-up between Spielberg’s wide-angle cinematic attitude and Cloverfield’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it horror - the film does the right thing by hiding the so-called monster until at least two thirds of the way through the film. By doing that, it makes one particularly emotionally raw moment hold so much weight; to counterbalance unveiling something mysterious, you have to have a sense of mystery in the first place.
In fact, the film really delivers when it comes to keeping you hooked - there are no real surprises per se (given that this retreads familiar ground with films like E.T. and more violent sci-fi films from the eighties), but more important is watching the core characters unveil the truth in increments and allowing yourself to be swept along.
The biggest surprise, for me, was how the film managed to simultaneously deal with otherworldly events and smaller domestic dramas without feeling too cluttered. Every beat felt deserved. There are a lot of curiously meditative moments in this film. It’s a film that’s filled with children, but they’re some of the most mature and well-realised kids I’ve seen on film in a long time.
Also - there are some seriously gory moments in this film, and I can’t help but question how this got a PG-13 rating in the first place. That said, I’d want to show this to kids. There are moments of horror, and genuine creepiness, but it’s also massively life-affirming and empathetic. As an exercise in originality, it doesn’t hold up, but as an update of films like E.T. that eschews all of the twee nonsense and never condescends, this is fantastic.